Immigration Reform by Executive Decree

President Barack Obama is proving adept at skirting the U.S. Congress by making law by executive decree. By finagling fundamental changes to existing laws, he ignores the Separation of Powers established by the U.S. Constitution, Articles 1, 2, and 3.

This president has decreed literally thousands of new bureaucratic rules and regulations for all phases of American life that bypass the legislative process, overstepping the nation’s separation of powers that define Legislative, Judicial, and Executive duties. The Founding Fathers were careful to set in place legal checks and balances to prevent abuses by one branch of government, but perhaps not careful enough.

By issuing executive orders and agency memoranda that effectively make new law or “tweak” existing law sans congressional action, the president is acting without restraint.

Realizing that the American public, for the most part, is disinterested in the mechanics of lawmaking, he rules with an imperial flare. Obamacare is an example, although it may yet be his undoing, for the citizenry is finally realizing that his healthcare legislation is impacting them financially and healthwise, and not for the better.

Citizens, beware of any legislation that is “comprehensive” and that must be passed before lawmakers know what’s in it.

Healthcare is not the only area of American life at stake. Consider, for instance, the Senate’s “comprehensive” immigration reform bill (S.744), which, if passed by the House of Representatives, will be another costly legislative disaster. However, S.744 now rests with the Republican-controlled House.

U.S. citizens and their representatives in Congress can no longer afford to give the president the benefit of the doubt on legislation or on executive actions, such as the following:

The Mexican gun-running saga that cost two Department of Homeland Security agents their lives;

The Benghazi assassinations of four Americans, including our U.S. ambassador;

The National Security Agency collection of electronic communications of untold numbers of U.S. citizens.

The five million plus middle class, bill-paying Americans who have been shocked by notices in the mail that, because of Obamacare, their health insurance has been canceled.

Citizens who tended to look the other way, as the president pursued a complete makeover of the United States, are beginning to wake up to the defects in his ideological program, which includes immigration reform.

Fortunately for Americans, Republicans hold a safeguard majority in the House and thus are in a position to come up with piecemeal immigration legislation, in contrast to the Democrat-controlled Senate bill that is as flawed as the Obamacare legislation.

The president and congressional Democrats continue to ignore the current chaos on the border, which affects national security, complicates the lives of 4 million long-term unemployed, and costs taxpayers more for the education, healthcare, and social services of undocumented aliens.

If the Senate bill fails to pass the House, the Obama team has plans to grant “backdoor amnesty” to illegal aliens.

One such plan, devised by Obama’s DHS political appointees, was the 2010 undated internal memorandum (“Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform”) signed by Director Alejandro Mayorkas of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The plan was meant to be enacted if no meaningful immigration reform was passed. Mayorkas is now Deputy Secretary of DHS.

This memorandum provides for DHS releasing illegal aliens from detention and would suspend or cancel their deportations and/or adverse actions under the guise of “prosecutorial discretion.”

On June 15, 2011, John Morton, DHS Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), issued a memorandum instructing ICE employees to use “prosecutorial discretion” to reduce arrests and prosecutions of illegal aliens.

On June 17, 2012, when in full re-election mode, Obama announced that DHS had promulgated a memorandum (referred to as “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”) giving citizenship and work authorization benefits to illegal alien youths, under “deferred deportation.” Youths, identified as those up to age 30.

These memoranda have worldwide effects. An estimated 24,668 children have been apprehended illegally crossing the border with Mexico thus far in 2013, double the 2012 number and 4 times numbers for previous years.

Many of the apprehended incoming “youths” are being released to “family” members. Both the “youths” ages and “family” relationships are never verified. The remaining “youths” are released to the government’s Refugee Resettlement office which just blends them into the American social services systems with amnesty.

Federal Judge Andrew Hanen stated in a December 2013 opinion involving alien smuggling, accused DHS was assisting the criminal smugglers by delivering children apprehended for illegally crossing the border to their illegal alien parents.

Federal Judge Reed O’Connor in an April 2013 opinion dealing with the president’s bypassing of Congress wrote, “Discretion does not entail the power to create new law.”

The recognized questionable excesses of Obama’s executive orders and bureaucratic rules have not stopped Obama from ignoring Congress.

James H. Walsh was associate general counsel with the U.S. Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1983 to 1994. Read more reports from James Walsh — Click Here Now.